Foodprint LA Walking Tour

The Arid Lands Institute is involved with two Foodprint Project events coming up in December Below is the information from the Foodprint Project site:

For Foodprint LA, we are adding two new events in addition to our regular program: an afternoon foodscape-mapping walk that will give us an inside look at downtown LA’s cold storage infrastructure, caffeine artisans, and future food market, followed by a happy hour food map presentation and party.

The Downtown Los Angeles Arts District was, until recently, known as the Warehouse District, and it is still a major food processing and cold storage hub directly connected by rail to the Port of Los Angeles. However, thanks to the peculiarities of its zoning and building stock, the neighborhood has become home to artists’ live-work studios, and, increasingly, to a new wave of creative food-based businesses.

We’ll have the opportunity to see both the old and the new first hand, and hear directly from the business-owners, entrepreneurs, developers, and city officials involved. En route, we’ll check out the coffee-roasting infrastructure of LA’s celebrated Handsome Coffee, explore the inside of West Central Produce’s state-of-the-art banana ripening facilities, preview a future Ferry Building-style food market, and more.

We’re excited to have a special guest guide, Alissa Walker, leading the tour along with Foodprint Project co-founders Sarah Rich and Nicola Twilley. We’ll also be collectively mapping the foodscape as we see it, using our cellphones, in a participatory cartographic activity led by civic media and gaming researcher, Benjamin Stokes. Tickets can be purchased for $15 through brownpapertickets.

When the sun goes down, we’ll end up at Villains Tavern, where you can join us to talk food, cities, and design. We’ll have a reserved space from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the upper level of the bar, where we’ll be reviewing and discussing the food maps we made during the day.

We hope to see you there, and again the following day, for our free public conversation program at LACMA.